Syracuse housing group seeks South Side supermarket

John Berry / The Post-Standard, 2001Jubilee Homes Executive Director Walt Dixie says the organization has plans to help start a supermarket on the South Side of Syracuse.
Syracuse, NY — Jubilee Homes of Syracuse Inc. has bought a building on Syracuse’s South Side as the potential home of a neighborhood supermarket, the organization’s executive director said this morning.

Next week, the housing agency will conduct a community meeting to announce the purchase, discuss strategies for landing an operator and to talk about the role neighborhood residents can and should play in the venture, said Walt Dixie, Jubilee Homes’ executive director.

The meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Nov. 19 at Southwest Community Center, 401 South Ave.

“We will discuss how we want to do this and why,” Dixie said. “There will be specific things the community has to do to help us.”

The neighborhood needs a supermarket but needs to demonstrate grass-roots support for one, he said.

Organizers hope to have a team assembled to pursue the project and to begin lining up support among lawmakers sometime in December, Dixie said.

Dixie would not disclose the precise location of the potential supermarket but said Jubilee Homes bought the building for $350,000 in August. The money came from sewage treatment plant mitigation funds administered by the Midland-Lincoln-Bellevue Committee, Dixie said.

The South Avenue Business Association, the Alliance of Communities Transforming Syracuse and local clergy also are collaborating in the venture, he said.

The South Side has convenience stores but lost its last full-scale supermarket when P&C Foods closed its Valley Plaza store early this year. The closest supermarkets to the South Side are Nojaim Brothers in the Near West Side, Green Hills Farm Stand in The Valley and P&C Foods east of Syracuse University.